Search Results (843)

This study investigates how master’s student teachers (MSTs) conceptualize and integrate programming and computational thinking within mathematics education. Grounded in the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic, and specifically its notion of praxeology, the study analyses 39 written reflections produced by MSTs who completed a compulsory programming-based mathematics task. The analysis identifies both mathematical and didactic praxeologies, revealing how MSTs’ engagement with programming reflects their development both as learners and as future teachers. The findings demonstrate that MSTs’ personal learning strategies, such as exploration, iteration, and productive struggle, closely parallel their envisioned classroom practices. The findings also show that many participants framed programming itself as the central learning object, highlighting a need to develop confidence and competence before applying programming as a tool for mathematical inquiry. The study argues that programming tasks provide a productive arena for bridging theory and practice in teacher education by fostering an interplay between praxis (know-how) and logos (know-why). Finally, the results indicate that MSTs require institutional support specifically aimed at developing basic programming fluency (e.g., handling syntax, debugging, and programming environments), so that computational thinking can be mobilized for mathematical exploration rather than being overshadowed by technical challenges. Full article

Nonlinear transport of tracer particles immersed in a sheared dilute gas with inelastic collisions is analyzed within the framework of the Boltzmann kinetic equation. Two different yet complementary approaches are employed to obtain exact results. First, we maintain the structure of the inelastic Boltzmann collision operator but consider inelastic Maxwell models (IMMs) instead of the realistic model of inelastic hard spheres (IHS). Using IMMs enables us to compute the collisional moments of the inelastic Boltzmann operator for mixtures without explicitly knowing the velocity distribution functions of the mixture. Second, we consider a kinetic model of the Boltzmann equation for IHS. This kinetic model is based on the equivalence between a gas of elastic hard spheres subjected to a drag force proportional to the particle velocity and a gas of IHS. We solve the Boltzmann–Lorentz kinetic equation for tracer particles using a generalized Chapman–Enskog-like expansion around the shear flow distribution. This reference distribution retains all hydrodynamic orders in the shear rate. The mass flux is obtained to first order in the deviations of the concentration, pressure, and temperature from their values in the reference state. Due to the anisotropy induced in the velocity space by shear flow, the mass flux is expressed in terms of tensorial quantities rather than conventional scalar diffusion coefficients. Unlike the previous results obtained for IHS using different approximations, the results derived in this paper are exact. Generally, the comparison between the IHS results and those found here shows reasonable quantitative agreement, especially for IMM results. This good agreement shows again evidence of the reliability of IMMs for studying rapid granular flows. Finally, we analyze segregation by thermal diffusion as an application of the theory. Phase diagrams illustrating segregation are presented and compared with previous IHS results, demonstrating qualitative agreement. Full article

This chapter examines shifting genealogies of knowledge and moral authority in Western Kenya by unsettling the hierarchical opposition between “indigenous” and “scientific” knowledge regimes as ways of knowing and acting. Treating pedagogy as a critical mode of social reproduction, it juxtaposes practices of taboo in the Mount Elgon region, as inherited prohibitions that regulate relations among people, animals, and land, with the deployment of animated educational media in Mumias by Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO) as a technocratic apparatus for imparting new agrarian knowledge and practices. By staging an encounter between these two modes of social knowledge reproduction—both understood as moral technologies that shape conduct, sustain ecological balance, and transmit communal values (one grounded in taboo, the other in technical instruction)—the paper re-situates an “indigenous”/“scientific” inequality within longer genealogies spanning precolonial, colonial, and contemporary postcolonial and developmental formations. By foregrounding commitments to these knowledge traditions, the paper stages how taboos and educational animations alike can embody evolving modes of community self-determination and ethical stewardship. It ultimately argues that the force of the “indigenous < scientific” inequality lies primarily not in correcting its hierarchical opposition but in the ongoing struggle over which modes of life will be allowed to endure. Decolonizing these genealogies requires attending to the marked/unmarked distinctions that structure bodies, discourse, and social reproduction in the present. Full article

Airport traffic flow prediction is a basic requirement for air traffic management. Building an effective airport traffic flow prediction model helps reveal how traffic demand evolves over time and supports short-term planning. At the same time, a large amount of air traffic data supports using deep learning to learn traffic patterns with stable and accurate performance. In practice, airports need forecasts at short time intervals and need to know the departure flow and its uncertainty 1–2 h in advance. To meet this need, we treat airport departure flow prediction as a multi-step probabilistic forecasting problem on a multi-airport dataset that is organized by airport and time. Scheduled departure counts, recent taxi-out time statistics (P50/P90 over 30- and 60-minute windows), and calendar variables are put on the same time scale and standardized separately for each airport. Based on these data, we propose an end-to-end multi-step forecasting method built on PatchTST. The method uses patch partitioning and a Transformer encoder to extract temporal features from the past 48 h of multivariate history and directly outputs the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile forecasts of departure flow for each 10 min step in the next 120 min. In this way, the model provides both point forecasts and prediction intervals. Experiments were conducted on 80 airports with the highest departure volumes, using April–July for training, August for validation, September for testing, and October for robustness evaluation. The results show that at a 10 min interval, the model achieves an MAE of 0.411 and an RMSE of 0.713 on the test set. The error increases smoothly with the forecast horizon and remains stable within the 60–120 min range. When the forecasts are aggregated to 1 h intervals in time or aggregated by airport clusters in space, the point forecast errors decrease further, and the average empirical coverage is 0.78 and the width of the percentile-based intervals is 1.29, which can meet the risk-awareness requirements of tactical operations management. The proposed method is relatively simple and also provides a unified modeling framework for later including external factors such as weather, runway configuration, and operational procedures, and for applications across different airports and years. Full article

Higher education inculcates in students an enduring curiosity about the world. Accomplishing this goal requires helping undergraduates recognize that learning is a social process occurring within multiple communities of practice. Each of these collectives provides different lenses through which aspects of reality are illuminated, none encompassing all there is to know about a subject. Students thus appreciate that learning is an open-ended processes driven by a curiosity that is never satisfied. Knowledge resulting from that process is forever being refined, a project to which undergraduates can contribute. Appreciating the many ways of knowing the world requires engaging meaningfully with these distinct communities. This is best achieved by participating directly in the work and lives of multiple such collectives. Field schools provide excellent opportunities in which students come to perceive, think about, and act in worlds constituted by the community of archeologists and that comprise people hosting and participating in the investigations. We use our experiences directing an archeological field school in northwest Honduras from 1983-2008 to illustrate how we used this learning environment to help undergraduates make original contributions to knowledge of the area’s past while rethinking who they are and what they are capable of achieving. Full article

Continual learning for open-vocabulary object detection aims to enable pretrained vision–language detectors to adapt to diverse specialized domains while preserving their zero-shot generalization capabilities. However, existing methods primarily focus on mitigating catastrophic forgetting, often neglecting the substantial domain shifts commonly encountered in real-world applications. To address this critical oversight, we pioneer Open-Domain Continual Object Detection (OD-COD), a new paradigm that requires detectors to continually adapt across domains with significant stylistic gaps. We propose Disentangled Domain Knowledge-Aided Learning (D-Know) to tackle this challenge. This framework explicitly disentangles domain-general priors from category-specific adaptation, managing them dynamically in a scalable domain knowledge base. Specifically, D-Know first learns domain priors in a self-supervised manner and then leverages these priors to facilitate category-specific adaptation within each domain. To rigorously evaluate this task, we construct OD-CODB, the first dedicated benchmark spanning six domains with substantial visual variations. Extensive experiments demonstrate that D-Know achieves superior performance, surpassing current state-of-the-art methods by an average of 4.2% mAP under open-domain continual settings while maintaining strong zero-shot generalization. Furthermore, experiments under the few-shot setting confirm D-Know’s superior data efficiency. Full article

With the rapid advancement of technology, data transmission security has become an increasingly critical issue. Visual Cryptography Scheme (VCS) provides a secure method for sharing secret images without complex computation—by stacking multiple shares, the secret image can be visually recognized. The earliest visual cryptography scheme was proposed. However, traditional VCS are limited to the encryption and decryption of a single secret. To address the evolving demands of modern information security, numerous enhanced VCS have been introduced by researchers, offering new perspectives and capabilities. This paper proposes a novel XOR-based visual cryptography scheme that supports fully independent secrets within a (k, n)-threshold framework for 2 ≤ k < n. In the proposed scheme, n shares can simultaneously encrypt C(n, k) distinct secrets. Each secret can be reconstructed by one subset of k shares out of the n, and all shares are designed to be meaningful images so as not to be identified as hiding a secret. This approach significantly enhances the flexibility of VCS, enabling its application in scenarios where different groups hold different secrets or where the reconstructed secret identifies the associated group, which can help administrators know which group has accessed the secret. As such, the proposed scheme is more suitable for a wide range of practical applications. Full article

The literature for brown lemming (Lemmus trimucronatus) and collared lemming (Dicrostonyx groenlandicus) population cycles was revisited from Barrow, Alaska. This review covered observations and research primarily from 1946 to 1974. Much of what we know about brown lemming cycles from North America was derived from these early studies. The data for collared lemming, however, are far less extensive and only a minor part of the historical research at Barrow. Nonetheless, important information was discovered. Collectively, the historical literature is confusing and sometimes contradictory. The time intervals, amplitude, and density of lemming populations from Barrow varied greatly from year to year. For example, in most papers, 1956 was considered a lemming population high, but in a major research paper in 1993, the 1956 data was sometimes included and sometimes deleted because it did not meet an arbitrary mathematical definition of a population high. Qualitative explanations were often used to support the lemming population cycle concept when it was apparently in flux or did not exist. Other investigations suggested synchronous lemming population fluctuations over wide geographic areas did not occur, but rather were localized most of the time. Even within a specific local area, lemming densities varied with habitat. Presumably, higher densities were in higher quality habitats, but this could vary somewhat with season. It is unlikely that lemming migrations occurred; however, local movements of large numbers of lemmings were witnessed. Although many studies suggested a specific event influenced lemming population fluctuations, overall, the data suggest multiple factors acting synergistically drove the x-fold increases and x-fold decreases in lemming populations at Barrow. Other qualitative observations, and quantitative studies suggest lemming population fluctuations affect and have an effect on the survival and reproduction of other species of birds and mammals at Barrow. Brown lemmings should be considered an indicator of the health of the Arctic environment at Barrow. Clearly, population fluctuations of lemmings at Barrow existed with an average interval for peak populations of about 3.8 years, ranging from 2 to 6 years, depending on what data was included and how it was analyzed. The conundrum, however, is defining a peak. Furthermore, one must ask if an average interval between peak lemming populations is really a cycle. The data support population fluctuations; however, the four annual phases of the cycle (e.g., increase, peak, decline, low) did not repeat themselves in sequence. Overall, perhaps cycles did not exist in the strictest definition of the word at Barrow. Perhaps it is time to redefine Barrow lemming “cycles” as annual population fluctuations that exhibit patterns over time. Full article

Background/Objectives: Policies to promote healthy eating often work through local food systems, which link food supply chains and food environments to individuals. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in national and global supply chains and emphasized the importance of local food systems in meeting community and individual needs. Unfortunately, we know too little about how to shape local food systems. This case study reports the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the New Orleans food system and the subsequent response from the community and local government to strengthen it through city and state policy changes, public–private collaborations, and grassroots citizens’ efforts. Methods: This study uses a participant–observer approach in which observations from an online 2020 survey of local food organizations (n = 56) were fielded by the New Orleans Food Policy Action Council (FPAC), a local coalition of food and agriculture groups. The authors, who worked with or were a part of FPAC, analyzed survey data for recurrent themes and then synthesized this with archived written materials and the authors’ own observations. Results: Key themes from this survey are detailed, along with an exploration of related efforts within the community, including: (1) Greaux the Good, a campaign developed by local food system stakeholders to successfully advocate for increased food assistance funds from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; (2) policy change related to food vendor permitting; and (3) establishment of two positions within the local government: a City Food Specialist to increase collaboration between organizations in the food system and an Urban Agriculture Liaison to support local food production. Lastly, innovative programs of grassroots citizens’ organizations are detailed due to their positive impact on food access for community members. Conclusions: The cumulative impacts of these efforts added to the resiliency of the local food system and may protect it against the effects of future disasters as well as strengthen its ability to promote healthy eating. Full article

Cultural tourism has become an increasingly significant phenomenon in urban areas, especially in cities rich in heritage sites. However, when the number of visitors exceeds sustainable capacity thresholds, both the physical and psychological comfort and safety of individuals may be compromised. A higher number of visitors inside historic buildings leads to elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂), particularly in poorly ventilated enclosed or confined spaces, primarily as a result of human respiration. Such conditions not only accelerate the deterioration processes affecting heritage materials but also introduce potential health risks for visitors. Parameters such as CO₂ concentration, indoor air temperature, and relative humidity represent key measurable parameters for assessing environmental Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) within heritage buildings. Digital real-time monitoring of these parameters plays a crucial role in preventive heritage conservation, sustainable site management, and in ensuring visitors’ comfort and well-being. This paper presents a procedure and methodology that use digital technological tools to efficiently estimate and monitor the Visitor Carrying Capacity (VCC) of enclosed/confined heritage spaces, especially Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM) and Sensor Technology. These kinds of spaces require particular attention due to their spatial characteristics. In order to do so, it is necessary to know the geometry of the site, and to consider IAQ conditions. This study also considers the number of People at One Time (PAOT) and Visitor Occupancy (VO). The results focus on the procedural development of the analysis and emphasise the role of digital tools not only due to their efficiency and accuracy in spatial analysis for estimating VCC, but especially for the real-time monitoring of visitors and surveying specific environmental parameters. The experimental phase of this study uses the Chapel of the Holy Chalice of the Valencia Cathedral (Spain) as a pilot case. Monitoring this space reveals how quickly high CO₂ levels are reached with continuous visitor presence, and how long it takes for them to decay in absence of people and under passive ventilation conditions. The outcome of this research is a detailed methodological framework designed to assess and monitor Visitor Carrying Capacity (VCC) in enclosed/confined heritage sites by integrating digital technologies, thereby enhancing sustainable management, planning and decision-making processes. Full article

Working to decolonize one’s mathematics teaching practice can create tensions between honouring Indigenous ways of knowing and being and not appropriating or tokenizing Indigenous cultures. This paper describes a mathematics teacher’s path towards decolonization in her grade 6/7 classroom in Saskatchewan, Canada. Through self-study research, Giroux created a framework using the 4 Rs of Indigenous research (respect, responsibility, relevance, and reciprocity), posing the research question: What is the value of my 4 Rs pedagogical framework for my professional growth as I aim to disrupt power and control in my mathematics classroom? Data, collected through a research journal, critical friend interviews, and student work, were examined using thematic analyses. Findings point to several semantic and latent themes of noticeable importance in disrupting power and control, while strengthening relationships, within the classroom. In this paper, the themes are presented and discussed in the context of decolonizing the mathematics classroom and for grounding the teaching and learning of mathematics in Indigenous perspectives and pedagogies based in the 4 Rs framework. Implications of the research include possibilities for K-12 educators to embrace and engage with Indigenous perspectives toward disrupting traditional power norms, promoting student agency, and strengthening relationships in the classroom and beyond. Full article

The rapid uptake of generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT, DALL·E and MS Copilot) is disrupting conventional notions of authenticity in assessment across higher education. The dominant response, surveillance and AI detection, misdiagnoses the problem. In an AI-mediated world, authenticity cannot be policed into existence; it must be redesigned. Situating AI within contemporary knowledge work shaped by digitisation, collaboration and evolving ethical expectations, we reconceptualise authenticity as something constructed in contexts where AI is expected, declared and scrutinised. The emphasis shifts from what students know to how they apply knowledge, make judgement, and justify choices with AI in the loop. We offer practical design for learning moves, i.e., discipline-agnostic learning design patterns that position AI as a collaborator rather than a cheating application: tasks that require students to critique, adapt and verify AI outputs, provide explicit process transparency (prompts, iterations, rationale) and exercise assessable demonstrations of digital discernment and ethical judgement. Examples include asking business students to interrogate a chatbot-generated market analysis and inviting pre-service teachers to evaluate AI-produced lesson plans for inclusivity and pedagogical soundness. Reflective artefacts such as metacognitive commentary, process logs, and oral defences make students’ thinking visible, substantiate attribute, and reduce reliance on punitive “gotcha” approaches. Our contribution is twofold: i. a conceptual account of authenticity fit for an AI-mediated world, and ii. a set of actionable, discipline-agnostic patterns that can be tailored to local contexts. The result is an integrity stance anchored in design rather than detection, enabling assessment that remains meaningful, ethical and intellectually demanding in the presence of AI, while advancing a broader shift toward assessment paradigms that reflect real-world professionalism. Full article

This study assesses and inventories agrodiversity within eleven representative oases of the pre-Saharan regions of Morocco, ecosystems that are particularly vulnerable to climate change and socio-economic pressures. The findings highlight the central role of fruit tree diversity in structuring and sustaining the resilience of oasis agroecosystems, complementing cereal and fodder crops. Special attention was given to the pomegranate (Punica granatum L.), a secondary but underutilized fruit species in Moroccan agriculture, which was found to hold a significant position in the surveyed oases. Farmer and community surveys identified five local denominations or varieties, including an original form known as “Guersmoum” or “Hamed,” distinguished by its spontaneous, non-cultivated character. This unique case exemplifies the remarkable coexistence between wild and domesticated forms, reflecting the complex dynamics between cultivated and wild biodiversity. The presence and use of this variety are closely linked to the production of a traditional local agri-food product, pomegranate molasses (“Amaghousse”), an artisanal know-how transmitted across generations and primarily preserved by women. The study documents several aspects of this practice, including processing techniques, yield ratios, and marketing channels, emphasizing both the economic and cultural significance of this local product. The discussion underscores the close interconnections between traditional knowledge, gendered practices, and the conservation of genetic diversity, showing how the promotion of local resources contributes not only to the preservation of agrodiversity but also to the maintenance of oasis cultural identities. Finally, the study highlights the broader implications of these findings for development initiatives, particularly through the recognition and promotion of distinctive local agri-food products, the integration of women in local conservation strategies, and the implementation of sustainable management approaches for fruit genetic resources. Full article

The literary career of Lettice Galbraith (1859–1932) coincided with a transformative period in British intellectual history, when the boundaries between scientific rationalism and occult epistemologies were being vigorously contested. This paper argues that Galbraith’s supernatural fiction represents a sharp challenge to Victorian medical science, using Gothic tropes to expose its deeply gendered structures of power. Situating her work within what Alex Owen has termed “modern enchantment”, it contends that Galbraith does not merely use the supernatural as a metaphor for social critique, but treats spiritualist practice as a legitimate methodology, a way of knowing that privileges embodied experience, and the testifying power of the material world over the cold, isolating rationality of institutional orthodoxy. Through a close reading of “In the Séance Room” and “The Ghost of Vittoria Pandelli”, and by employing a theoretical framework that combines feminist theory with new materialist perspectives, this analysis demonstrates how Galbraith’s stories reconfigure the séance as a ‘feminist counter-laboratory’. In this space, women—both as mediums and as spectral presences—reclaim agency from male dominated medicine and psychiatry. Matter itself becomes an agential force: objects, sounds, and even atmospheres intra-act with human participants to produce truths that medical authority cannot access or suppress. Ultimately, Galbraith’s stories deliver a powerful and enduring claim, that systems of power designed to silence and erase will be undone by the vibrant presence of the material world itself. Full article

Hepatitis C represents a critical global health crisis, causing approximately 1.4 million deaths annually. Although 98% of cases are treatable, only about 20% of infected individuals know their hepatitis C virus (HCV) status, highlighting the urgent need for rapid and more efficient diagnostic management. Viral genetic material can be detected in serum or plasma within just one week of exposure, making it the most reliable marker and the gold standard for active HCV infection diagnosis. In this study, a biosensor was developed to detect conserved nucleotide sequences of HCV using a 3D surface electrode composed of poly-L-lysine (PLL) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). PLL is a positively charged biocompatible polymer rich in amine groups, attractive for the immobilization of proteins, DNA, and other biomolecules. PLL was employed to construct a 3D surface with vertically aligned CNTs, achieving a high electron transfer rate. Cyclic voltammetry technique and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to characterize the sensor platform, and analytical responses were measured by differential pulse voltammetry. This HCV biosensor detected the hybridization event by a significant reduction in DPV peaks in the presence of the ferri/ferrocyanide redox probe, without any intercalator agents. DNA responses were observed in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) and cDNA-spiked serum samples, demonstrating its analytical specificity. These findings represent advances in analytical tools that can effectively address the challenges of timely diagnosis for asymptomatic HCV carriers. Full article